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My toilet is clogged, again. I have a fever and my throat is raw. My body is mirroring my mind. I absorbed too much of the dreary Portland drizzle. My house is full of things I don’t want or need and I’m too tired to sort through them. It is full of other people’s stuff. I want to knock down walls and rearrange it. I feel boxed in. I want it to be new and all mine. As it stands, I want to run away from it and the weeds creeping up on it. And the boxes in the basement and the overturned picture frames and the memories of all the things cooked in the kitchen. I’m afraid to look for my winter things. I want to buy all new, but I’m broke. I’m upside down, leaking money. I keep making bad decisions. I don’t trust myself. I don’t trust my instincts. They’ve been so wrong. I don’t trust the universe. My bed feels too small. My brain and my heart feel too small. I’m loosing touch with them. They keep getting rattled and the connections are coming loose. Things that were inside of them are seeping out of me, leaving scabs on my skin. It’s so hard to be around people who are happy. I hate myself for hating them. For having to smile when I’m falling down inside. It’s nearly impossible to fake it, but I’ve had so much practice. I like being in airports because no one knows me. I can stop in the middle of the terminal and cry and no one cares. People cry in the airport all the time. It’s allowed. People cry late at night and don’t sleep and get sicker and don’t have answers to anything and know they’ll make more bad decisions tomorrow and lie in bed and sweat with fever…and people endure far worse things than any of that.

Because the bus from the airport was filled with a hundred loud, annoying college kids returning to school, I realized today is a holiday. The worst Columbus day. This has not been my year. I guess I should have known when I was lying in the ER on New Year’s Day that 2011 might not measure up.

I hope I haven’t missed all of the sun Pittsburgh had while I was away, because there wasn’t a bone in my body this morning that wanted to get on a plane headed East. I’m shocked that I’m here. Nothing about here feels right.